This blog is now closed.

Evaluation

We decided to post our evaluation as a film. Here it is:

Audience Feedback

These are some quotes from the audience feedback on our premiere evening:

1. Please give details about what you like about our film opening.

"It was really fun and lighthearted. Very enjoyable."

"Very well acted, made it funnier"


"Really embodied the Chick Flick genre"


"Really cleverly thought out for example the whole idea of Special K"


"Editing was great"


"Very creative shots and camera movements"


"Made me want to watch the whole film"


"Loved the quirky bumble bee at the start, it immediately caught my attention which was maintained throughout"


"Was very funny, totally got the humour"


"The credit fonts suited the genre, loved how they faded in and out"


"Really good use of ellipsis, the lighting and costume all worked very well and the timing of the soundtrack was really effective"


"Loved the camera movement when staggering out of bed"


"It was really amusing, a good choice of music, funky and upbeat, suited the genre well"

2. What is your favourite part of our film opening and why?

"Loved the bus scene, made me laugh"


"When she poured orange juice into her cereal, this was funny"


"I really liked the Benny Hill like running after the bus"


"When Kate looks out of the window and sees her sister is lying there, also at this point when the music stopped the surprise was really funny"


"I liked how Kate looks rough and then after spiting out her tooth paste comes up looking all pretty"


"The bumble bee at the start was really good"


"Loved the reaction to the orange juice"


"Liked the use of fast forward to show time passing by"


"Liked the part when Kate left her sister on the floor, was funny"


"Kate throwing the clock out of the window and knocking out her sister, very entertaining"


"Liked the zooming in and out of the blind for the costume change, very clever"


"Loved the switch from wide shots to close up shots in the bus stop scene"


"The bus stop scene was TOO FUNNY, loved it"


"I liked the alarm clock getting thrown out of the window and how it sets the scene for the humour to come"


"The mad hair!"


"Loved the build up of unpredictability"


"The shots in the fridge, very creative"


"The orange juice bit added humour which is hard to do"


"Loved the music choice and how the clips all fitted to it, was great"

We are really happy with our audience feedback, it's always a nice feeling to know that something you've put lots of work and love into is liked by other people. It's also interesting to see how well people respond to a simple bit of slapstick humour, for example Sam being knocked out by the alarm clock. I'm really pleased about how everything has turned out, and it's a bit strange to remember when we first planned the idea.

Music choice

I've been looking back over my blog posts and I realised that i haven't yet justified our use on music in our film opening. Basically, we were stumped over what to use after the company had told us we couldn't use the 'cool shades' track without paying a lot of money. Then, while flicking through the tracks on my Ipod I remembered a track called 'Fell In Love With A Girl' by The White Stripes, which has a very upbeat sound and has lots of points where the music stops. I knew we couldn't use the actual song, and actually we wouldn't have wanted the original version because the lyrics might have distracted from the actual movie, so we found an instrumental cover done by an unsigned artist on YouTube. We put this onto Garageband and cut it in places so that it would fit with the film, and voila! We were really happy with the way the soundtrack turned out, and how well it fits with the upbeat nature of the film.

The Disney Channel

It's been over a week into the easter holidays now, and although I've been doing plenty of revision (honestly!), I've also been fairly susceptible to what I call 'holiday boredom'. This has meant succumbing to the evils of the Disney Channel, a habit i've been trying to kick for the past few years, to no avail. I don't know what it is that makes it so addictive, but for some reason i'll happily sit there and watch an episode of something that i've seen at least five times, when I couldn't bear to watch an episode of any of my favourite 'proper' programs for any more than three times.

Anyway, while watching an episode of Wizards of Waverley Place the other day, something occurred to me. In this episode there was a character in a wheelchair, a topic that in any British drama would have used as most of the storyline for the episode. However, in this instance the fact that the character was in a wheelchair was completely inconsequential to the storyline. In fact, it wasn't even mentioned. This man was treated as a normal person, and even managed to help the protagonists escape a 'dangerous fate'. I've looked up the actor playing the character, Daryl Mitchell, and he is actually a wheelchair user, and not just stuck in one to make the cast seem more diverse.

This made me think of more ways in which programs on the Disney Channel actually shows real life better than British dramas, for example the casts in most of the shows are usually ethnically diverse, including Caucasian, Black and Asian actors. The casts are often also mixed in gender, for example there are many shows with male (The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Zeke and Luther, Pair of Kings) and female (Hannah Montana, Sonny With a Chance, Shake It Up) protagonists. The portrayal of older characters is sometimes mocking, but there was an entire storyline in an episode of Sonny With A Chance in which the main characters are shown by an older character that they are just as capable as them, and should not be discriminated against because of their age.

However, the channel isn't completely diverse. For example, all the characters are shown to be heterosexual, and while there is the occasional 'effeminate' character, the audience will never be shown that they are anything other than straight. As the channel is shown in America, this is hardly surprising, as in many states it is usually a taboo subject, and people are often discriminated against because of their sexuality, and if the channel decided to introduce any story lines on the subject they would probably lose a good 30% of their audience due to parents of the children watching the channel. As for regional identity, there is a good deal of stereotyping, mostly to do with British people. The character Mason in Wizards of Waverley Place is one of the few Brits in any of the programs, and is heavily stereotyped as tea loving and eccentric, and used words like 'jiffy' in normal conversation and has a very posh accent. There was also a Scottish character in a Canadian show, 'Overruled' on the channel called Rusty, who was also stereotyped, wearing kilts and playing bagpipes at least one an episode, with a fairly light, understandable accent for the Americans.

In conclusion, although the Disney Channel still has a long way to go before it reflects reality in a non stereotypical way, it is better than many British dramas, as it is better at being racially diverse and showing disabled people to be normal. So there's my attempt at justifying a colossal amount of time wasting.

Premiere evening speech

Here is the speech we gave at the premiere evening. We've yet to read/see all the feedback, but most of it was good and hopefully the rest will be too.

Killing Bono

Yesterday I went to see the film Killing Bono, which is a sort-of biopic/comedy movie adapted from the memoir Killing Bono: I was Bono's Doppelgänger by Neil McCormick. The basic synopsis is the tale of Neil, played by Ben Barnes and his brother Ivan, Played by Robert Sheehan, who fail at becoming famous musicians while their classmates in U2 go on to become a huge success. I thought the storyline was quite funny, and I thought all the actors were very good, but the main reason I decided to review it here was because the beginning of the film was very well done.

The film starts with the end, which is quite a popular method of storytelling in many movies, but it was only from one character's perspective, while at the end the clips are shown from a normal viewpoint, so you know who Neil is talking to. It's difficult to describe fully without screenshots, but I thought it was an unusual way of starting the film, and certainly draws the viewer in, adding mystery and intrigue. Overall, I found it was a very good film, and you don't really have to be much of a U2 fan to enjoy it. Here are some of the posters and promotional images from the film.

Something else notable about the film, was that it features the late Pete Postlethwaite, in his final role, playing the boys' homosexual landlord.

Premiere Evening

Our media teachers have organised a premiere evening for the 6th forms' final films, so that our families and friends can see our work. We're also going to be giving out a sheet that looks like this:

for each group's work, so we can get some good feedback. The results will be looked at after the holidays, so I won't be able to post people's responses just yet.

Evaluation Questions

When we come back from the Easter holidays, we will have to do our evaluation, which will be 20 marks towards our final grade, so we have to do it well! Here are the seven questions we have to answer: 


1. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your film opening represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your film opening and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your film opening?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?

7. Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?

Survey Results

Here are the results of my movie research. It seems we were right to have chosen to do a comedy, as it seems to be the majority of people's favourite film genre. Comedies that were popular in my survey include The Hangover, Superbad, Meet the Parents and 17 Again.

My survey also showed that more women preferred Romance films, while men preferred Action and Horror films, however it was pretty much equal for Comedy. The people who preferred Historical/Biopic movies were usually older and were a C1 or above in social demographics.

The least favourite movies listed were the Twilight movies (romance), The Happening (disaster? Whatever it is, it was bad), The Last Airbender (action, I think) and the most recent three Star Wars movies (action sort of thing).

Many people also stated that the first five minutes of a film are very important, because 'it sets the scene', 'tells you what genre the movie is going to be' and 'draws the viewer in'. They also said that the use of interesting shots is 'good, but the movie shouldn't be all about the flashy shots'.

Many people also said that the cast heavily influences their decision as to whether to see a movie or not, for example films with Colin Firth, Megan Fox and Robert Pattinson are likely to make people want to see the film, while Nicolas Cage, Eddie Murphy and Kristen Stewart are likely to put people off a film.

Preferred film genres were 12A and 15s, while not many people listed 18's. PG's were also fairly popular, which would probably be the certificate of our movie were we to make the rest of it. Preferred themes for almost everyone included either Romance, Good vs Evil and Action. Finally, many said they were fairly influenced by movie advertising, saying that the trailer can often influence whether they see the movie in the cinema or not. One person also stated that 'If the poster is badly designed, I won't see the movie'.

Overall I think the survey gave me a good idea about what our target audience is (females from 13 - 30, but possibly also males as it would be mainly a comedy with some themes of romance in it), and provided some good information which would, if we were to carry on the film, be very useful to us.

Final Draft!

I missed Friday's lesson, so when I came in to our lesson today I was incredibly happy when Andrea told me we'd finished our film. All we had to do was both watch it through and see if we both liked it. We did, and now I'm looking forward to having it shown to the school at our premiere evening so that we can get some good feedback. So, without further ado, here it is:



I have to say, it feels a bit anticlimactic seeing as it's pretty much the same as the last draft, but with a few tweaks. I'm glad it's over now though, so now I can focus on the exam work!

Whatsupelle

It's only slightly relevant to A2, but during some YouTube perusing the other day, I discovered this fantastic YouTuber:



I know it's more of a music video, but the way she edits her videos is really well done - the frames actually look like mirrors. It would be difficult to crowbar any of these effects into a movie, but it's nice to appreciate and we can keep it in mind for A2.





Of course, we'll have to get through AS first...

Update

Today we were going to film the last scene in our film, which was supposed to be the last thing we'd need, but the weather today has been rainy and cold, nothing like our other film (well maybe the cold).
It's a shame, because Andrea came into school wearing her costume, so she's going to have to come in on Monday in the exact same outfit. C'est la vie...

UPDATE: We did film in the end, because after looking back over the film we realised the weather was similar to how it had been when we had done all the outside filming. At least we have it now :)

Draft 5

Here is the latest draft, with all the credits. Nearly there!

Bee!

Here is the animation me and my dad put together for the credits. The grey bit is a tad confusing, but we've tested it out on the film and it works ok and it looks fine, so that's all good :)

Opinions on Media Studies

'Cambridge University called them a "soft" option this week. John Humphrys thinks they're pointless. In the more macho parts of journalism, real journos don't study. They roll up their sleeves and report.

Yet thousands of young people sign up to media studies courses. They have helped produce former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson (Westminster University); Sunday Times editor John Witherow (Cardiff School of Journalism); Royal Television Society Young Journalist of the Year 2004 Mark Daly (University of Stirling); and hundreds of others. So what's the problem?

Until the late 1990s, seasoned journalists relished opportunities to rubbish media studies. It was the modern equivalent of 1960s sociology, a fool's paradise jammed full of bearded Marxists with "sweetie mice for brains". When Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, condemned it as "vacuous" and "quasi-academic", there were cheers in newsrooms from Brighton to Inverness.

Some still feel that way. John Humphrys, the presenter of Radio 4's Today programme, says: "Even more kids are doing it now and it is sillier than it ever was. Where are they going to find jobs? If you decide after a proper degree in English, history or economics to do a one-year postgraduate course in journalism at a good university, all well and good. But the idea of three years at university doing journalism is barmy."'

This is an extract from an article in the Independent that I came across the other day. You can find the rest of the article here.

I've often noticed that there is negative press around Media Studies as a course, and that people usually assume students taking the subject are only doing it to get an 'easy qualification'. This annoys me, because the journalists claiming it's the cop-out subject have clearly never seen how a MS course works. One thing I've noticed doing our AS level is the amount of extra time students put in in order to get the highest grade possible, more than would be done for subjects like History or Maths, both considered 'acceptable' subjects. Yes, sometimes people make a rubbish piece of film that simply ticks all the right boxes, but what about the others who are truly putting work and creativity into something they love? People taking Art and similar courses go through a similar process, and they put as much care and attention into their final piece as any self-respecting media student would do, and they still recieve respect because it's a 'proper' subject.

And who are journalists to judge anyway? Their whole career is based on the media industry, and yet they sneer at the students taking a subject that teaches the things that they've had to learn on the job, or gained experiance before they could get to where they are. Are they simply jelous because it's almost a 'short cut' that they never had the opportunity to do? Or is it because '"Journalists love exposing the truth, but if anyone wants to take a close look at what they do they hate it"', as said by Peter Cole in the article.

'Philip Schlesinger says: "Media studies is an easy hit. Critics just need to find an absurd course and satirise it. The strange thing is that a lot of people who read media studies and get important media jobs then disavow their degrees. They forget they did MS."'

I suppose it's a debate that will go on for a long time, and even my dad scoffed when I said I wanted to do MS for A-Level, despite the fact he knew nothing about the subject. I ignored him, and took it anyway, and now I probably want to something towards it in my career, so there you go. I do think that it is a worthwhile subject, and anyone who tells me it's the easy option will receive a punch in the face from the media massive.

Filming madness

We edited the outtakes from the final day of filming today, and let's just say we were a little bit hyperactive that day...



Although it looks like we basically messed around all day, we did get a lot done, and can now finally say we have no more filming left to do! And whenever we're feeling down, we definitely know where to go to cheer up back up again...

Survey

A few months ago Miss told us to do a survey in order to find out the target audience for our films. She posted a version for us to base ours on, and here is my survey:

1. What is your gender?
2. What is your age?
3. What is your favourite movie genre?
4. What is your least favourite movie genre and why?
5. How important do you think the first five minutes of a film are?
6. What is your opinion on the use of unusual shots in movies? Does it make them more interesting?
7. Do the cast influence whether you watch a film or not?
8. Do you have a favorite actor? If so, what genres do you prefer them in?
9. What is your favourite film from your favourite genre?
10. What is your least favourite film from your favourite genre?
11. Which age certificate do you watch the most?
12. Name a theme that you like to have in a movie (i.e love, action etc)
13. Are you influenced by movie advertising? (i.e posters, tv adverts)

I'm going to send this out through facebook and will also ask friends and family to complete the survey so that I can get a wide range of data.

Re-re filming

Last weekend me and Andrea have finally filmed the last bits for the video, which is just as well, because we have less than 30 days left to complete the editing process. We put some clips together in our lesson the other day, and Andrea did some more to it during her study time the other day, so here's how it's looking now:

Re-filming - The Outtakes

Here are all the outtakes which I edited together when Andrea was ill one lesson. She, however went back and added the soundtrack and titles which I didn't know about until she'd posted it. I have to say, it was an interesting choice...

And can I also say I'm very glad I wore leggings that day! There are shots in the final thing we have edited together so far where you can see up my dress, but as my dignity is still (fairly) preserved, and I don't really want to lie on the floor again, I've decided not to make too much of a fuss. It would also be more realistic, an probably add to the comedic element a bit. Possibly. Hopefully. Ish.

Channel 4's The Promise

A program that I've been watching recently is 'The Promise', written and directed by Peter Kosminsky and starring Claire Foy, playing Erin, and Christian Cooke, playing Len. One thing that struck me as I watched the first episode was how cinematic the titles are, and I think that was what drew me in. Also, the subject of the program is something that isn't often talked about, and i've found it incredibly interesting (if horrible, too). I did history for GCSE, and we learned a lot about before the Second World War, and a bit during, but one thing that isn't often taught is the aftermath for the Jews, and I had no idea that they faced any kind of hardship post-war.

As well as being informative, the Promise is also beautifully shot. The opening sequence has the titles going to black screens with white writing. The titles have things like 'Daybreak Pictures' as well as the actors, which is unusual for a TV series.

Although the visuals for the program in general are very well done, and the research is in depth, I find that i'm not sure about the storyline. The program is set in two different times, and keeps hopping back and forth between them, which is never confusing, but it seems quite badly done. I think that all the parts set in 2005 are a bit unnecessary, although I understand that the point is to show that Israel is still in conflict. I find that although I liked Claire Foy in Little Dorrit, her character is just a bit too sulky to sympathise with, and a bit too bland to find her worth being a protagonist. There are also a lot of pointless scenes, for example the scene in a nightclub where we learn that Erin has epilepsy doesn't make sense. Surely if she was epileptic that would be the last place she'd choose to go? And the fact she has it doesn't actually add anything to the story, unless it becomes important in a later episode. Finally, the use of 'cliffhanger' style endings of each episode just seem to make it a bit too cheesy for the subject matter, turning what should be a highbrow drama into a bit of a soap. Also they just seem to be at random, rather than built up to during the episode. With an hour and a half's worth of TV to play with per episode, you'd think there would be something that would keep you watching for that long, but there isn't.

Although the 2005 parts seem somewhat flawed, I do enjoy the 1946 bits, where we follow Erin's grandfather Len as she reads his diary from the time. Christian Cooke is probably better suited to his role and has a far more interesting character to play. Overall, I will carry on watching The Promise, but I always feel just a tiny bit disappointed when we go back to Erin's part of the story.

Reviews for 'The Promise':
The Guardian
The Telegraph

Titles 2.0

After analysing the titles for Mean Girls and Juno we realised that most production companies have an introductory clip that shows which company produced the movie. For example, here are the Paramount and 20th Century Fox ones:





We decided that once we decided on a name for our production company we should make something, maybe more simple, but similar to that. As the names used in many chick flicks are quite quirky and unusual (e.g Juno - 'Mr Mudd productions'), so we wanted to come up with something similar. Then Andrea had the idea of calling it 'Bumblebee Productions', which we both found quite inspiring. We've had the idea of having a bee fly around the name, which my dad is going to help me create, as he's a graphic designer and works with the software all the time.

Ahh...

The person from freeplaymusic.com has replied to my message:

It's a shame, but it looks like this means we won't be able to use this track without paying for it. Worth a try though! We'll have to look into some other options. This was my reply:

Titles

For our movie we will need to create titles, so we spent a lesson looking at the order, font and style of titles, in a few movies similar to ours, such as Mean Girls and Juno.

 

We wrote down the order it appears in Mean Girls (couldn't get the clip up, but it's in this post)

1.   Production company

2.   A (someones name) production

3.   Lead Actor

4.   Film title

5.   It then lists the actors, not syncing any shots of them with their character apart from Tina Fey's name coming up. This is because she also wrote the screenplay or had some other role in the creation of the film.

6.   Casting Director

7.   Based on the book

8.   Music supervisor

9.   Music conductor

10. Co producer

11. Costume designer

12. Editor

13. Production designer

14. Director of photography

15. Executive producer

16. Produced by

17. Screenplay by

18. Director

From this, we know that for our film the first credit should be the Lead Actor and the last should be the Director, as they are the credits that stick in people's minds and are likely to be more well known by the general public.

Reply

The owners of the website have replied to our message. Here is a screenshot of the email:

This makes it sound like we can't put it on YouTube, but this is my reply, just in case we can:

Hopefully they'll reply as speedily as they did before, because then we can use Monday's lesson to look for alternatives if we can't.

Music For Our Film...

We've been listening to the soundtrack we might have that I last posted, and we're not really sure that we like it. We did some research and we found out that the original song we were using, Cool Shades, is on freeplaymusic.com, which is a website for music that is not copyrighted. 

We decided to send them a message in their 'Contact Us' section to check that the music is definitely copyright free. Here is a screenshot of the message we sent... (click to make larger)

 And they replied with this:

Soundtrack

This is the music we're thinking of using for our movie opening. We found two instrumental covers of two different songs and put them together. When we edit the film we'll put this on and change it to make it appropriate. We'll also need to add sound effects too.

Experiment shots

After editing what's there of our film, we found some old film that we'd done to show different shots. We'd done it before the holidays but had forgotten to edit it together, so we did that during our lesson. Here's the finished thing:

Filming - Day 2

Last week we filmed for the second time, because we decided that lots of things needed to be re filmed for continuity purposes and a lot of our film was quite shaky. We made a list of all the things we need to to re film in order, and checked them off as we went. We met up at Alice's house again, because although she is no longer part of our group she still let us film there. We were about to start filming when we realised that the tripod clip was missing off our tripod (again!). We didn't want to have to postpone the filming because we needed to get on with editing, so I walked back to my house to get my dad's tripod and buy some props that we would need (Special K cereal and milk), which meant we lost about an hour of filming time. We carried on anyway, but it got to about 4:00 and it was starting to get dark, and although all the filming we had left to do was inside, the light in the room we were using was covered by a pink lampshade, which made the light go a funny colour, and we couldn't take it off. We filmed it anyway, but we will probably need to re film that bit again, because it really doesn't look right and the continuity is awful.

Practicing...

As I mentioned in the previous post, as well as the Snorricam shot in 'Wake', we also liked the panning shot. Today I decided to have a trial run to see how it will work. Using my brother's skateboard, the flip and gorilla pod, and my brother, I did a few takes with some rope tied to the skateboard in our conservatory, which has a really flat, smooth floor.



It took a few takes for my brother to take it seriously, but the final take is what we're hoping to achieve. The only problem is that the drive to Alice's house, which is where we are filming it, is very bumpy and won't look good in the final thing, so we're working on things to put underneath. Otherwise this should work well, and hopefully up the marks!

Snorricams

The week before term ended, our group set to work on making a Snorricam - a camera that attaches to the body and creates this effect:



We also quite liked the panning shot of the man's body on the floor, and are thinking of using this for Sam when she's been knocked out by the alarm clock. With the aid of my little brother's skateboard and something flat to roll it on, this could be easily achieved.

We set to work making a cardboard and masking tape prototype (that sounds a lot better than it actually was) and did a few example videos (yet to be edited and put on this post).

THEN during the holidays Andrea's dad made us a brilliant proper one (of which i haven't seen yet, but I've seen proof it works so it must be brilliant) and here are the results:



Yaaaay!

We plan to use this shot for when Kate wakes up, which will show the transition from sleeping to waking or some such nonsense and will give us a few more marks!

Group Update

Before the holidays, Alice and Valentina decided to become a separate group, as they felt they weren't contributing enough compared to me and Andrea. This came as a surprise, but we think it's better that they feel like they're contributing enough.

Meanwhile, me and Andrea are still allowed to use Alice's house as our location for when we re film, so we've been working on a plan for the day. We think it'll take less time this time round, because we know what shots we need and we have a clearer idea of what we want it to look like. Also, after our trip to the BFI we have some good ideas of how to hit the higher marks and set our film apart and make it look really professional.

Finally, we've decided to add my character (the one on the floor) in a bit more, as it's not really explained why she is on their drive, so we've decided my character is the main character's sister. We've also decided to name our characters, the main character's name is Kate and my character's name is Sam. We'll add some dialogue in at the beginning between the two characters so that the relation between the characters is clear. Finally we've named our film (as a working title) 'Special K', in reference to the main character's name and the type of cereal she eats.

Oh, and finally finally we've been thinking of titles and making them look realistic, and as both my parents are graphic designers I'll probably be able to persuade one of them to help us make a realistic production company logo and look at appropriate fonts etc. so watch this space!